springing a leak

Mark Mandel thnidu at GMAIL.COM
Fri Jul 16 02:44:46 UTC 2010


Oh, no disagreement there! But as I read just the headline in your original
post, which contained no more of the story, those were the interpretations
that occurred to me. Isn't the whole point of these posts that headlines(e)
can be very misleading and confusing in their drive to elmnt unnesscr elmnts
f wrtn lng?

m a m

On Thu, Jul 15, 2010 at 12:19 PM, Dan Goncharoff <thegonch at gmail.com> wrote:

> Yet the first sentence of the article shows both 1) and 2) are wrong.
>
> DanG
>
> On 7/15/2010 12:10 PM, Mark Mandel wrote:
> > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> > Sender:       American Dialect Society<ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > Poster:       Mark Mandel<thnidu at GMAIL.COM>
> > Subject:      Re: springing a leak
> >
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > And I decided after a couple of readings of the headline alone that
> either
> >   a) he was *fired*, and Wired was making a bad joke by using "leaked"
> for an
> > NSA official,
> >   b) or his *identity* was leaked to the media
> > It never even occurred to me to read this as a transitive verb with the
> > object ungrammatically deleted.
> >
> > m a m
> >
> > On Thu, Jul 15, 2010 at 5:19 AM, Victor Steinbok<aardvark66 at gmail.com
> >wrote:
> >
> >
> >>   Here's a strange headline.
> >>
> >> http://bit.ly/cIuM0f
> >> NSA Executive Leaked After Official Reporting Process Failed Him |
> >> Threat Level | Wired.com
> >>
> >> Normally, it wouldn't be necessary to assume that it was classified
> >> information (or documents) that was leaked by an official, but, in this
> >> headline, the object is missing completely. So it sounds like the
> >> "Executive" may have sprung a leak.
> >>
> >>      VS-)
> >>
> >> ------------------------------------------------------------
> >> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >>
> >>
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >
> >
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>

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